


A Prepawsterous Incident

by becketz



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6039979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becketz/pseuds/becketz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry doesn't die in Kentucky. Instead, Harry is hauled back to Valentine's secret bunker and used as a human experiment. Eggsy just wants that cat he found while rescuing a Swedish princess to stop digging its claws into his tender flesh every time he tries flirts with someone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Prepawsterous Incident

Despite all odds, Harry doesn’t die in Kentucky. 

“You’ve got the craziest luck I’ve ever seen, man,” Richmond Valentine informs him later from outside his concrete cell, presumably in Valentine’s hidden bunker. Harry, hair matted with sweat and blood and one of the worst headaches of his life, tries not show how much he’s relying on the wall to prop him up from the other side of the steel door. 

“Or, maybe the lives of a cat?” his henchwoman, Gazelle, adds. Harry doesn’t like the sort of half smirk she’s sporting. That feeling of dread only grows when Valentine bursts out into one of his maniacal laughing fits.

“Cat! That’s great, that’s good Gazzy,” and then turning to Harry, “you’ve got the lives of a cat! This is going to be great!”

Harry knows many things: that a proper martini is made with gin, that it was Percival who really caused the paralytic gas tie pins to be discontinued despite his denials, and that these next moments are not, in fact, going to be great.

“Mr. de Vere,” Valentine says, suddenly painfully sincere and intense. “This is for science!” 

Which is, of course, how Harry ends up as a rather handsome tabby cat stuck in Valentine’s end of civilization bunker.

***

Harry will be the first to admit that the hard sciences are not exactly his forte. Oh, he has the basics down and he can bullshit his way through most conversations but for the more in depth understanding he’s always been able to rely on Merlin’s voice in his ear.

However, from what he understands, not only has Valentine transported a library of virtually every accomplishment of the arts created by mankind, he’s also made sure to transport his own research and design department. 

This includes all of Valentine’s pet projects throughout the years, from the practical to the downright bizarre. 

One of Valentine’s dead-end projects is, for lack of better terms, is a sort of cost-affordable nuclear transmutation machine. 

“The ultimate goal was a way to make food production more affordable, more green, you know?” Valentine explains as he fiddles with a, quite frankly, terrifying looking…. laser machine. Harry’s limited chemistry and physics vocabulary have no idea where to even start with what’s happening.

“But something just wouldn’t work. We couldn’t get the results we wanted and the research kept going sideways. Funky results, if you catch my drift,” Valentine continues.

“Not quite,” Harry says dryly from where he’s lying on a cool metal table, strapped down and left with only his pants. The doctor has just left after neatly and efficiently stitching up Harry’s head wound from where the bullet grazed him earlier. 

“Well, to make a long story short we couldn’t continue with where our research was going because it would have been inhumane. I couldn’t do that to a fluffy rabbit, Thumper doesn’t deserve that shit. Of course, now we have you! And look man, it’s nothing against you. I just don’t like you.” Valentine finishes. 

“Ah,” Harry says. “I can assure you, the sentiment is returned.”

Valentine beams at him. 

“That’s the sort of spirit I like to see! Now, just lay back and think of England or whatever shit you repressed British type do.”

The next moments are some of the most painful of Harry’s long and varied life. He’s been trained to withstand all manners of torture. It’s still a relief when his vision narrows to black and his consciousness fades. 

Waking up is… an experience. 

Everything duly aches, like a particularly bad and lingering hangover. Not only that, but his limbs don’t seem to want to respond in the normal way that limbs respond. His center of gravity is off, and after listening carefully to determine that no one else is nearby Harry opens his eyes and attempts to roll off of the cot because he automatically knows he is no longer strapped to it. 

The next moments are extremely embarrassing and one which he hopes are not being recorded to haunt him forever. Not only does he get tangled in a restricting cloth, the fall to the floor is much further than he was expecting. Harry has his body trained to be a weapon, for his muscle memory to engage at the slightest hint of danger. Even for him, the twist he does is downright strange. Instead of landing in a crouch with his hands up, ready to engage an enemy, Harry lands… on all fours?

Harry can now see that it was his own boxer briefs that tangled him up in such an embarrassing fashion. However, that’s the least of his concerns. Valentine, it turns out, has helpfully propped up a full length mirror with a sticky note thoughtfully stuck close to the floor so Harry doesn’t have any trouble reading it due to his new height. 

Instead of his normal features of a middle aged man just starting to go a bit gray, the face of a cat stares back at Harry. Tabby, his mind supplies through the shock. 

“Shit,” Harry tries to say. It comes out as a rather disgruntled yowl instead. 

***

The sticky note, Harry thinks uncharitably, only says “Help yourself to anything! ♥♥♥ -V-man”

Harry takes back what he said before and decides the next half hour is the most embarrassing period of his life as he tries to relearn how to walk. He’s always been a quick study though and once he has the basics down, jumping, running, and dive-bombing from high surfaces comes easy. It’s simply a matter of not thinking too hard about the fact that he’s now walking on four limbs instead of two.

Harry can feel a headache starting to make itself known with all the repressing he’s been doing since waking up, no longer strapped to a table.

Unfortunately, it seems there is a recording device in the room that Harry hasn’t been able to locate yet (most likely in a ceiling panel). Gazelle elegantly clinks her way into the room and smoothly steps the side, neatly avoiding Harry as he leaps at her from the top of the laser machine where he positioned himself upon hearing the sound of someone approaching. She must have watched his multiple practice runs first as he worked out the trajectory and power needed to make the leap as dangerous as possible.

Upon landing, Harry has to leap out of the way to avoid one of her dangerous leg blades as she reaches out to shove him to the side. Involuntarily, Harry can feel the fur on his back raising, his tail puffing, and his fangs bared in a hiss. 

“None of that now,” Gazelle smirks, bending down to set a bowl filled with water on the ground.

“Valentine may not like you but you are still a guest here. Additionally, you are the first live test subject we’ve used for that particular machine.” Harry doesn’t like the small, twisted curve to Gazelle’s lips. “Valentine couldn’t bare the idea of hurting a live animal if the transformation went awry. I am very glad you came along.” 

Harry, from where he’s backed into a corner so he at least has the wall at his back, feels his lips curling up so his teeth are showing. 

“Oh, and please be aware that the countdown to V-Day has begun, so for the next few hours everyone will be indisposed with the celebration. After it’s over, Valentine will be back to discuss your future in the new world.”

Harry wants to claw that smirk off her face. Treating the death of millions, if not billions of people, like a celebration. 

And with a toss of Gazelle’s perfect hair, Harry is once again alone in a room with no opposable thumbs.

Harry has very carefully kept from thinking about Kingsman since waking up in Valentine’s bunker. Now, he can’t keep himself from feeling a pang in his newly shaped breast bone. He only hopes that Merlin is going to be able to come through in the last minute with what he was able to gleam from Harry’s glasses feed in those final minutes before Valentine shot him. The alternative is not something Harry can bring himself to think about. 

Eggsy, his mind whispers. Harry squashes that train of thought before it can began. He’s somehow been turned into a cat and civilization as he knows it is potentially ending in a few hours - he needs to focus on doing what he can with that cockup before moving on.

Harry spends the next how many hours trying and failing to come up with a plan to a) first, escape and b) stop Valentine. 

Valentine might be trying to be a slightly decent and eccentric host to Harry-the-cat, but he’s failed to leave any sort of timekeeping piece in the room. He resentfully laps up most of the water while trying not to dwell on the fact that he’s actually, literally, drinking out of a bowl on the ground. 

Later, after he’s catalogued the equipment in the room and come to the sad realization that a lack of opposable thumbs make everything he could have previously used as a weapon or tool useless, he curls up into a corner. Harry is out of ideas, and by his internal calculations, almost out of time. He has, of course, been in his fair number of pickles throughout the years on various missions. Despite this, Harry is at an utter loss to think of a time when so much was at stake and he was so powerless to do anything.

Of course, that’s when Valentine’s angry voice comms on over the comms and an hour later the door of the room where Harry is being kept swings open on its own violation.

***

Harry wastes no time making his escape, streaking through the hallways. 

It doesn’t take long to find the rest of Valentine’s prisoners - apparently the research labs were kept down the hallway. On the way, Harry has to leap over multiple fallen bodies with, Lord, have all of Valentine’s henchmen had their heads exploded? Well done, Merlin. For Harry has no doubt that Merlin is most definitely involved.

Harry can hear the nervous chatter of Valentine’s prisoners as he turns the corner, almost losing his footing. His new body is quite aerodynamic, he’s pleased to find. Silver linings, and all that. 

All thoughts of silver linings are swept aside in Harry’s mind when he catches sight of the crowd around the corner. Like he suspected, Harry recognizes many of the missing VIPs milling around, unsure and uncertain. What catches his attention is the bloody and slightly worse for wear gentleman in a bespoke suit that’s calmly directing and organizing the various heads of state, scientists, and famous and slightly less famous celebrities. 

Eggsy looks wonderful. A drink on a hot, dry day. The suit that Harry had made and picked out for him might not be in proper shape to meet royalty on the average day (not to speak of the lack of proper tie), but he still wears the whole ensemble just as well as Harry knew he would. Harry could purr with how good Eggsy looks. In fact, he finds himself doing just that. 

Harry takes a moment to just breathe, to have this moment of relief that Eggsy is here in front of him, whole and beautiful and perfectly imperfect and then he’s racing ahead, dodging feet and dead bodies.

Eggsy makes a rather satisfying yelp as Harry determinedly claws his way up his body. 

“Ow, what the hell!? Merlin, why the fuck is there a cat here?” Eggsy demands. Harry can just make out Merlin’s voice through Eggsy’s earpiece and only because his hearing is sharper. Kingsman’s tech is top of the line and designed so that only the agent can here his handler.

“Must be the pet of one of the dignitaries whose head blew earlier.” Merlin sounds amused. Eggsy tries to shake him off, but Harry hunches down and digs his claws into Eggsy’s shoulder from his new perch. He isn’t letting ago without a good reason. He quietly thanks whoever’s out there that despite apparently not having a problem with shooting and killing Valentine’s henchmen, Eggsy is too kind hearted to deliberately hurt Harry, a seemingly defenseless animal. 

“Ow, ow, ow, fuck,” Eggsy is chanting, but Harry doesn’t retract his claws until Eggsy resignedly gives up with knocking Harry off from where he’s twined himself around Eggsy’s neck like a particularly gauche fur scarf. 

“Seems like the cat’s adopted you. If it’s not doing any harm, you might as well leave it.” Merlin tells Eggsy pragmatically, “You still have work to do.”

Harry lets out a purr in Eggsy’s ear to motivate him. “Yeah, alright,” Eggsy sighs, which is how Harry ends up with a front row seat to Eggsy charming, encouraging, and sometimes threatening an eclectic mix of world leaders into forming cohesive groups to allow them to escape from the bunker, all for their own good, of course. 

Harry couldn’t be prouder of his protege. 

The only hiccup comes when the missing Swedish princess approaches. Her hair is a mess, nothing close to the elegant updo that Harry saw in various photos and she’s really not wearing enough clothing for a bunker located in snowy mountains. She’s also running her hands down the lapels of Eggy’s suit with more familiarity than Harry would have expected.

“Who's this?” and a titled nod towards Harry. 

“No idea,” Eggsy says honestly. “It climbed me like a tree and here we are,”

“That seems to be a theme with you today,” Princess Tilde dimples with a suggestive smile.

What, Harry thinks. 

Not that he’s looking for it, Harry can see the sort of familiarity between Eggsy and Tilde that only comes from a more biblical acquaintance. When on earth did he have time to bone a princess, he thinks incredulously. He’s always known Eggsy to be talented at anything he sets his mind too, but Harry is reluctantly impressed that not only has Eggsy apparently saved the world, he’s found the time to have a post-victory shag. That sort of time management is nothing short of striking with any agent. 

The only excuse for what happens next is that Harry is still adjusting to being a cat and not a human being. He feels the hair all of his body puffing out, and the next time Tilde’s hands come close to where he’s draped on Eggsy’s neck, he hisses at her, fangs bared.

“I do not think he likes me!” Tilde announces. She doesn’t sound terrified of Harry’s deadly fangs. Harry can feel his tail fluffing in agitation. 

“He?” Eggsy questions.

“Oh yes, it looks like you have a tomcat on your hands.” Tilde informs Eggsy. 

Harry is still puffed up, and Eggsy is starting to grimace from where Harry’s claws have popped out to dig into his shoulders again. 

“Well, I can take a hint,” Tilde announces, “I shall go and help wrangle the rest of the European leaders into some sort of order to help you and your organization, yes? After all, we seem to all want the same thing. Farewell, and thank you for saving the world and a rather fun evening.” With that, Tilde darts in quickly to give Eggsy a rather chaste kiss on the cheek and swans away.

Harry licks one of his front paws smugly.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very fierce,” Eggsy sighs and gets back to work.

Harry decides not to examine why he feels so inordinately pleased with himself. There are more important things to dwell on, after all. 

Later on the private Kingsman jet, Harry lets himself doze curled up on Eggsy’s lap. They’ve picked up Roxy and she’s given him a few satisfactory scratches under his chin. Now that the bigger problem of saving the world is out of the way, Harry lets himself think about the future. Let the rest of Kingsman know that he is not, in fact, dead in rural America but has somehow been turned into a cat by a mad scientist or….. well, that’s the question. 

Fuck it, Harry thinks. I can’t even lift a hand grenade conveniently shaped like a lighter.

Harry will fix this problem when he wakes up.

Harry wakes up hours later back in England wanting nothing more in the entire world to be able to have a cup of tea. When he darts in to try to steal some of Eggsy’s earl gray, he feels himself being picked up.

“No, no,” Roxy chides, gently bouncing him up and down, “tea is bad for cats, yes it is.”

On a usual day, Harry would maim anyone who treated him as such. But he rather likes Roxy, and she also feeds him a biscuit. 

Harry grudgingly eats the biscuit and let's himself be towed off the jet into Kingsman headquarters. 

The next hours are illuminating. It appears that not only did Eggsy kill Valentine and save the world, he also murdered Arthur. 

Through helpful context clues and over thirty years of acquaintance, Harry is able to gather from Merlin’s body language that Harry Arthur deserved his fate. Harry can’t help the feeling of pride the wells up in his chest to know that Eggsy - petty criminal, reckless, problem causing Eggsy - is the one who caught the mole and took the appropriate course of action to secure Kingsman. 

To show just how impressed he is, he takes inordinate pleasure in spending the rest of the day by being underfoot whenever Eggsy tries to walk anywhere. 

By the fourth time Harry’s managed to trip Eggsy, the rest of the mansion and support staff seem to have unanimously agreed that Eggsy gets to have the pleasure of taking Harry home and caring for him.

“After all,” Roxy points out, “It’s not any of us he won’t let out of his sight.”

Harry tries to pretend this was his plan all along. It wasn’t. He’s only slightly alarmed to find he’s having a harder time thinking of long term consequences. Honestly, he’d much rather focus on how nice it feels when Eggsy scratches in just the right spot behind his ear. 

This is, perhaps, not the best of developments. 

What’s more alarming is later that night when JB tries to make a new friend in Harry. Eggsy is less than impressed with JB’s newly scratched nose and fear of all things tabby shaped and Harry tries to talk himself out of feeling jealous at how it’s JB who gets to be cuddled and cooed over. 

Harry does not feel bad about informing JB of where he rests on the hierarchy of this house. He does not. If in the following days he lets Daisy pull his tail and pet him a tad too hard in dignified silence, that’s because he knows how much she means to Eggsy. 

***

A routine forms.

Eggsy moves into Harry’s house, and it is most definitely still Harry’s house if Eggsy refuses to refurbish it or take down any of Harry’s rather hideous wall hangings, and in the next few days works at moving his mother and baby sister in. 

Eggsy sleeps in Harry’s bedroom, on his bed, in his sheets. Harry makes sure that JB knows his place is at the bottom of the bed by Eggsy’s feet, and then takes his rightful place next to Eggsy’s head on the adjourning pillow. 

During the days, Harry accompanies Eggsy to either the Kingsman tailor shop, or the manor. He accomplishes this by resuming his perch on Eggsy’s shoulder and then refusing to let go with his claws until Eggsy has given up removing him. Luckily, it hardly takes any time at all to train Eggsy into accepting his new job as Harry’s manservant.

Despite Eggy’s rough exteriors and bawdy language, the lad has a soft side a mile wide. It only takes Harry a few pitiful meows and scrunching up his face to 9 times out of 10 accomplish in leading Eggsy to completing Harry’s goal. 

Merlin shakes his head, presumably at what a disgrace Eggsy is, but Harry’s also come to realize that if he ever wants an extra snack, all he has to do is make his way to Merlin’s office and spend a few minutes twining himself around his ankles and purring so that Merlin will surreptitiously pass him a few nibbles of something delicious. 

Harry would be horrified about how easy it is to pretty much take over Kingsman if he wasn’t benefiting from it. Also he’s a cat. He’s tried typing a message out to Merlin on the keyboard, only to find himself kicked out of the programs before he can do more than press “mnerlkjimn”.  
Paws do not lend themselves well to typing.

Additionally, it appears that in the wake of V-Day and Arthur’s treachery, not only have all the passwords been reset, most of the programs have been switched to biometrics, something the previous Arthur had opposed as “too complicated and inflexible in an emergency situation.”

Now that he’s dead, Merlin has taken to gleefully upgrading every single piece of software and tech so that not only is it five years ahead of the rest of the world, but closer to ten. The worst part is that Harry can’t even feel annoyed at the upgrades foiling his plan to inform the other agents that he is not, in fact, dead but instead now a rather prime example of felis catus, over how impressed he is. The various upgrades are measures that he completely agrees with; if staying a cat for the rest of the time and living in spoiled gluttony and pleasure is the price he has to pay to keep Kingsman safe, well, so be it.

Harry never thought he would live past 40 and ever since then each year has been something to be sweetly cherished. Although this a surprising turn of events, Harry knows it could have been much, much worse. 

Harry doesn’t dwell on how he finds himself napping in the sun, tail lazily and rhythmically swishing back and forth instead of trying to force his way into Merlin’s lab to look over mission specs. He feels tired, and full of good food, and all he wants to do is rest. 

After the chaos and terror of V-Day, things like a veterinary visit for Harry are on the bottom of any to-do list made. Harry doesn’t mind. He also doesn’t mind that Eggsy still calls him “the Cat.”

The one hiccup is when Harry attempts to write his name with a stolen pen on a Sun newspaper. He only gets the shaky and wobbly letters “HA” out (it is not only incredibly hard to grasp a pen with one’s mouth, let alone write coherently) before Eggsy is descending upon him, ripping the paper out from under him.

“Bad Cat! Bad!” Eggsy is flushed, color high in his cheeks. He’s clutching the Sun to his chest and while Harry thinks Eggsy looks lovely (he always looks lovely), he looks incredibly sad too.

“You don’t do that,” Eggsy gasps out before turning around and stomping off. Harry jumps off the dining room table to follow, ashamed even though he doesn’t know what exactly he’s done to incite such a harsh reaction from Eggsy.

Harry gets his answer moments later when he follows Eggsy into his old study, only to watch Eggsy collapse into his desk chair, head buried in his hands.

Eggsy’s face crumbles when Harry leaps up onto the desk and gently facebutts him with an inquisitive “Merp?”

“Not your fault, Cat.” Eggsy mumbles, running a heavy hand over his face. He’s obviously trying to pull himself together and it’s even more obviously not working. Harry feels like he’s intruding, that he’s watching Eggsy work to put the pieces of himself together. It’s a very private moment, for Harry can’t imagine Eggsy ever being comfortable with someone else watching him gasp shallow breaths and let out shaky sighs, his hands going white at the knuckles as he relentlessly and methodically balls his hands into fists. 

It doesn’t matter how much Eggsy loves or is loved by someone; he doesn’t show weakness if he can help it. He has his walls constantly up, a handy quip ready. He’s had a hard life and a life full of abuse. That’s not the sort of thing one unlearns and it’s not the sort of thing that goes away after a few months of even the most comfortable of lifestyles. Harry is no fool - he knows without a shadow of a doubt that the only reason he’s getting to see such a spectacular meltdown is because of his current furry status. 

Harry feels a tad perturbed that this is all over a lousy Sun article. It’s a shit newspaper.

“Just, you know. Trying to keep him alive, even if it’s just in my own mind, yeah? He plastered those god awful headings all over his wall. Kinda thought I could do the same.” Eggsy confesses to a cat.

And oh, Harry gets it now. 

My dear, dear boy, Harry thinks fondly. You are so much more than I ever deserved.

Harry doesn’t deserve to have someone crying over him weeks after his supposed death. He did what he needed to do to serve his country but he has no illusions to the sort of person he was…. is. He’s a selfish man and at the end of the day, everything he did for Eggsy was selfish also. He doesn’t deserve to have these tears knuckled away for him and he doesn’t deserve someone as incredible and full of promise as Eggsy spending not only a second thought on Harry’s supposedly cooling corpse but apparently an emotionally charged meltdown in a out of date office with only a tabby cat for company.

If Harry spends the next few hours with Eggsy’s sweet, tear damp face mashed into his fur, well, it’s a secret that will never leave this room.


End file.
